Who LARAONLINE Tell us more about you!

[iluvcarats]

Hi Laraonline! I always enjoy reading your point of view. I know you live in Australia and are expecting your third baby. Care to share more?

 

[Linda W]

Yes, lara please share. I love reading your posts

 

[kittybean]

Yes, Lara, please share! Your writing has such an interesting, sincere tone. I would love to learn more about you.

 

[LaraOnline]

Girls, I am so surprised! (and I suppose a little flattered too, if the truth be told)

The thing is, I often feel a little embarrassed about what I post in this forum, although it is such a ''real'' and sincere forum that it is a little haven in the world, and I let my guard down.... then I don''t want to come back for a few days, because I feel like I''ve ''spilled my guts'' so to speak, and should just leave well enough alone!!

I wanted to be a fiction writer (I was a newspaper journalist by training and trade, before I had kids), so I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve a bit. Fiction writers can be quite idealistic people! I want my children to go into science or the professions... they are more likely to have more practical ideas on how life works!

I went to have my 20-week scan today, and I''m a little taken aback, the truth be told. This is an extremely un-PC situation coming up now, so hold tight. I have spent this whole pregnancy thinking I was carrying a boy. This has suited me very well.

They told me I was having a little girl!!! My husband told me before we went into the scan that if this one was a girl, we were definitely having another baby, so four kids. I agreed, readily, because I was so certain this one was a boy!

Now I''m feeling rather .... surprised! But my little girl is very excited.
D''you think I''ll get over the shock?

 

[ksinger]

Date: 12/12/2008 3:58:46 AM
Author: LaraOnline
Girls, I am so surprised! (and I suppose a little flattered too, if the truth be told)

The thing is, I often feel a little embarrassed about what I post in this forum, although it is such a ''real'' and sincere forum that it is a little haven in the world, and I let my guard down.... then I don''t want to come back for a few days, because I feel like I''ve ''spilled my guts'' so to speak, and should just leave well enough alone!!

I wanted to be a fiction writer (I was a newspaper journalist by training and trade, before I had kids), so I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve a bit. Fiction writers can be quite idealistic people! I want my children to go into science or the professions... they are more likely to have more practical ideas on how life works!

I went to have my 20-week scan today, and I''m a little taken aback, the truth be told. This is an extremely un-PC situation coming up now, so hold tight. I have spent this whole pregnancy thinking I was carrying a boy. This has suited me very well.

They told me I was having a little girl!!! My husband told me before we went into the scan that if this one was a girl, we were definitely having another baby, so four kids. I agreed, readily, because I was so certain this one was a boy!

Now I''m feeling rather .... surprised! But my little girl is very excited.
D''you think I''ll get over the shock?

I can tell you about her. In one sentence. She''s reeeeeal dang SMART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PS - Congrats on a baby girl! And I''m sure if negotiations later with the hubby become necessary, they can be done.

 

[LaraOnline]

Hey ksinger!

I like your new quote. Pretty timely, considering the political history wars we''re having over on this side of the planet at the mo!

 

[iluvcarats]

I am so glad you saw this Lara! (I had eye surgery yesterday and am still a little fuzzy, but I will be back to chat later!)

 

[LaraOnline]

Actually, Kittybean had to mention it to me.
You might have had the eye surgery, but I''m the one who misses the best threads all the time!
Thanks for thinking of me, carats!

I wish I could share something really thought provoking with you, in honour of this thread...

I attempted a novella once. It was about an Anglo girl in Australia, searching for identity. She runs away and joins the hippies (which I did) and finds a form of identity in the land, which provides her with a kind of neo-Aboriginal outlook to an extent.

However, an unlikely fling at a music festival has her pregnant. She hitch-hikes away to the north of WA, and ends up giving birth alone, and then killing the child by suffocation, in a dry river bed in Aboriginal country.

Very existential, non?

Actually, even thinking about the new baby''s death scene is harrowing to me now...

 

[ksinger]

Date: 12/12/2008 7:57:09 AM
Author: LaraOnline
Hey ksinger!

I like your new quote. Pretty timely, considering the political history wars we''re having over on this side of the planet at the mo!

Thanks! That''s from a book by Tuchman called "Practicing History". It''s a series of essays and such about writing history, reading history, and various events that she wrote about in her books. She also talks about writing contemporay history versus that which is written later. She''s a marvelous read. She wrote "March of Folly", which I need to read in its entirety. I''ve only read the section on Vietnam.
Too many books too little time, eh?

So what history wars?

 

[LaraOnline]

Mostly centred on the interpretation of Aboriginal experience since the arrival (or invasion, if your taste runs that way) of the British colonists.

 

[Irishgrrrl]

LARA!!! I''m so excited that you have your own thread now!!!

And I saw where you posted on another thread that the hubby is FINALLY beginning to support your diamond habit! YAY!!! It''s about flippin'' time!!!

And congratulations on the new baby! I know you were shocked to find out that it''s a girl when you had been so sure it was a boy, but I think you''ll start to get excited about having a girl. And, look at it this way . . . since the hubby wants to have another one to try for another boy, that will be four kids total, right? Plus you and the hubby equals six family members . . . which means you''ll have to get a SIX stone ring!!!

 

[iluvcarats]

Date: 12/12/2008 8:20:56 AM
Author: LaraOnline
Actually, Kittybean had to mention it to me.

You might have had the eye surgery, but I''m the one who misses the best threads all the time!

Thanks for thinking of me, carats!


I wish I could share something really thought provoking with you, in honour of this thread...


I attempted a novella once. It was about an Anglo girl in Australia, searching for identity. She runs away and joins the hippies (which I did) and finds a form of identity in the land, which provides her with a kind of neo-Aboriginal outlook to an extent.


However, an unlikely fling at a music festival has her pregnant. She hitch-hikes away to the north of WA, and ends up giving birth alone, and then killing the child by suffocation, in a dry river bed in Aboriginal country.


Very existential, non?

Actually, even thinking about the new baby''s death scene is harrowing to me now...

Hi Lara!
No worries - no need for any thought provoking words of wisdom. Just enjoy the comfort of your own thread!
Your novel sounds interesting. Isn''t it amazing what perspective can do? Sounds like now you read those words and think "What was I thinking?" but I am sure you were certain of your convictions when you wrote them. I thought I knew everything when I was in my twenties. Now that I am in my thirties I realize that the only thing I am absolutely certain of, is that I really don''t know much of anything at all.(humbled by life and motherhood I suppose) I have learned that the more I think I know, the less I tend to listen....

I am so excited that you are having a little girl! Do you have 2 girls already? How are you feeling? Any weird cravings? What is the weather like in Australia (the land of Hugh Jackman

)during the winter? Do you have a favorite book/author? Have you ever been to the US?

 

[LaraOnline]

Hi Irishgirrrl, I ventured into this forum for the first time in quite a long time - and I saw you had a thread as well!!! So that was exciting too!!!
I woke up this morning feeling a little less ''surprised''. My man is into having ANOTHER go after this one, but I have woken up feeling resolved that three is QUITE ENOUGH!!! After all, I''ll be nearly 40 (yes, that photo is quite recent, I think I must look young for my age)

My husband is a professional (vet) and has big plans, but tbh, there is not really so much money in the industry. I feel kind of pressured financially, and I''m not sure I want to have four.

We have just moved into a wicked house (did you see the thread on my house in shopping?) and I have NO intention of moving anywhere.

My mother said something interesting to me last night. She said she was glad I was having another girl (this will be my second) as it is better for companionship for the mum.

My mum and I have had an ''interesting'' relationship in some ways. She is quite a strong person, and I am really quite a fragile flower. Our home life was a little tumultuous when I was a teenager. So it was interesting to hear her saying those things.

 

[LaraOnline]

Date: 12/12/2008 3:13:05 PM
Author: iluvcarats

Your novel sounds interesting. Isn't it amazing what perspective can do? Sounds like now you read those words and think 'What was I thinking?' but I am sure you were certain of your convictions when you wrote them. I thought I knew everything when I was in my twenties. Now that I am in my thirties I realize that the only thing I am absolutely certain of, is that I really don't know much of anything at all.(humbled by life and motherhood I suppose) I have learned that the more I think I know, the less I tend to listen....

Well, I guess when you become a mum, you're kind of embracing life, as it is, and not getting caught up in the political to-and-fro. I have always been very interested in women's 'sense of place' in society, and also the sexual place of women, in modern life and in Australia.

Australian as a nation seems less comfortable with itself than the US, or even the UK - although I think there are some reflections of the social uncertainty seen in the UK - and I wanted to discuss these thing in the novel. The landscape, which in reality is quite arid and sparse, (and even in a lot of places, quite scrubby and trivial looking)was very important to my main character's experience.

The killing of the baby was, yes a reference to the necessary brutality of tribal life (we tend to romanticise the tribal life, non?) but it was also very much a comment on the difficulties placed on women in this current society, where intimacy does not necessarily mean full acceptance of the individual woman, as a physical fertile body and as a personality. The true reality of male-female relating is too much for most people (well, as reflected in popular culture), most of the time, I believe. That's why I'm so surprised to find myself happily married (I married quite late, 32, and had my first baby immediately), and it's also the reason I love this forum.

 

[LaraOnline]

The meaning of Christmas

In a sacrificial mood, told my husband not to buy me a Christmas, birthday or anni present, because we have just bought a house. I decided that an eternity ring sometime later during the year was what I wanted, if we could afford it at the time.
He agreed.

Then he went and bought me a present anyway. I was stoked. My birthday and wedding anni are just after Christmas.

My little girl has just forgotten, and told me it is all silver. (She could mean white gold). It's from a high street store, which means it's a bit hit and miss quality wise.
I'm afraid it'll be ghastly, and that he's wasted his money.

I'm definitely a yellow gold girl, and I like to wear my favourite pieces every day.

Christmas sucks ass after all.

 

[arjunajane]

Ha ha Lara!
I already thought this, but you sound like my kinda girl.

 

[softly softly]

Lara your novella sounds very interesting. Have you thought of studying creative writing?

Also, if you don''t mind me asking, what newspapers have you written for?

I found your comments about Australia''s sense of nationhood very interesting. Have to say I agree with you. Postcolonial literary theorists have an interesting take on this with regards to Australian literature - namely that Australian writers (and indeed Australians as a whole) belong neither wholly to the First world as represented by the West, nor to the Third World, but rather inhabit what has been termed the ''Second World'' which is at times trapped between the two so has lead to a certain anxiety regarding identity.

Hope my incoherent ramblings make some kind of sense.

 

[LaraOnline]

Hi softly,

Well, I did most of a journalism degree with eng lit, politics and economics majors at the Uni Qld, (St. Lucia)
Then I went to work my first job at a little daily newspaper in Northern NSW.
This was a fantastic job, I did all sorts of stuff from magazine-style articles on people, and fancy houses, to High Court murders and everything in between.

Then I went back to uni to finish that degree, and worked at the Courier Mail/Sunday Mail newspapers.
I didn''t like that paper too much, TBH, it wasn''t as hands on as the little daily, surprisingly, I was pretty bored.
I went back to uni and finished my degree (that was how I managed to squeeze an extra major in there, did a few extra subjects)

I worked a bit for the Sunday Mail magazine, and then got a job as a travel reporter, but that travel magazine went bust, so then I worked for a weekly business newspaper.
Then I went back to uni to do some MORE English Lit (that was where the sci fi came in), and tossed up dong honours in it, but decided not to, and went overseas.

En route to Europe, I stopped off to Perth to visit my sister, who is involved in the African / world music and dance scene over here.
I ended up postponing my ticket until the last possible minute, and got involved with the Giblett forest blockades that were happening at the time!
I also travelled up to Broome and Cairns, eventually flying out to Asia from Darwin.

In the UK I was pretty much immediately desperate for money, so worked as a temp secretary at a variety of jobs and travelled around Europe with a girlfriend.
When I eventually came home, I returned to Perth and basically returned to the forest protest movement! I was involved with the arts scene and when the forest thing came to end for me I went to Perth Central Art College.

Then I started a teaching degree, but gave it away when I got married, now I''m south of Perth, and a respectable business woman / housewife!

I can post some chapters of the novel if you like, I have some rough notes that I managed to salvage when my computer went bust.
It''s not really that long, but it''s kinda cool.

 

[LaraOnline]

I thought your comments regarding the Second World vs the First World were interesting.
Of course, I am a little confused, because I understand you must be talking about a sultural First and Second world, rather thana purely economic one, and yet my economic education has me interpreting ''First'' and ''Second'' in purely economic terms!

 

[softly softly]

Lara yes I was talking in cultural terms (I have no formal training in economics, but believe me the current financial crisis has me learning fast).

What an interesting career/life you have had. I remember the forest blockades, such an emotive issue.

Perth Central Arts College - is that the one in Northbridge near the Art Gallery?

 

[LaraOnline]

Yep! That's the one!

Sorry about all the typos in my previous post. My little boy was climbing on my lap (and all over the keyboard).
Luckily, I understood exactly what you meant!

 

[ksinger]

Just popping in to read. You certainly have had an interesting path! My life and career seem rather dull in comparison, although I suppose I''ve had a twist or two, even in my little backwater.

I''ve not travelled as much as I would like. I''ve only been to Ireland and Germany. I would love to visit Australia one day. I confess that seeing the Sydney Opera House (such an iconic building!) would be on my list, since I''m an opera buff.

Keep posting, because I do love your posts!

 

[iluvcarats]

Tell us more...

 

[LaraOnline]

Hey girls,
well, here''s the first chapter of my funny little project.
I wrote it in a caravan, while I was still very much living the hippie life style (and still young enough to think I could get away with it!!!)

The chapter names are roughly named after chapters of ''The Golden Bough''
please be sympathetic, as it''s still basically in draft form, I sent it to a couploe of funding workshops but nothing ever came of it so far anyway.

chapter one : magic of similarity
"So many worlds in this world, and I''ve never been anywhere. Never been out of this country. Don''t want to, really, though I''m told I should. Broaden my mind and all that, but the way I see it I''m from here, and that''s the end of it. Lot''s of people in the other worlds think that too. It''s not where you''ve been, it''s where you''re at.

“That''s the end of it for all of us, I guess : time. My friends -" , and here, Rhode flung out an arm, encompassing the flickering faces in the golden halo of firelight, "- my friends all think the same. We belong here, no matter what people say. We''ve got nowhere else to go...

"Like produces like, so they say. Not always. My own mother mighten''t recognize me anymore, I wouldn''t reckon -" . Laughter tinkled, but politely, because this was a prepared Storytime.

For a motley crew, they were polite. And dirty too. Smeared arms and dirty fingers thrust out into the smattering of illumination; immediately behind the small crowd, the theatre of forest had dropped its ice-curtain of night. Velvet air stretched darkly back, as if into space. The wilderness stretched, more profoundly now, as if the trees were creatures revived by the cold.

The youngsters tended not to wander too deeply into this forest; they may have been living, illegally, within it, but they tended to paths and firm ways. While the cityfolk read of protestors, and imagined leavetaking wildness, in fact the debauchery took on a merely destitute air, with a smattering of apocalyptic drug users (no dealers) adding the prerequisite of spice.

The limpness of this new Woodstock was hedged partly by lack of running water and sanitary services, but mostly by the sheer long-running-ness of the campaign. For it was a campaign, fought long, and unerringly - and mostly by night.

But it was Storytime right now.

"The elders did that, the elders of the city-way community now. Like before, the Brits pushed us out, they didn''t want us. I know from those that been there that they still talk like that, the colonies. They made slaves of us, slaves of their own people. Bunched us with other people, black people" - inevitably a cheer came from the back, this was blackfella country, an important part of the campaign - "from all over the world, worked us instead of the blacks when the blacks couldn''t do it anymore. When Britain''s own morality wouldn''t let them do it to the blacks anymore. Put their own people on the ships instead.

"And what did my ancestors do, when they got here? - Rhode pauses, dramatically, for suspense. The theatrical moment is not lost on her audience who, used to this self-generated entertainment, send the obligatory growl through, like a ripple -

"...what did they do? Killed the blacks ("Boo!") Rich people haven''t got a monopoly on ignorance, you know. Convicts killed Aboriginal people too. God I hate my ancestors.”

Rhode took a deep breath, peered through the dancing stagelights, left and right to those nestled beside her. This was her story night, she wanted to check her progress.

"This is my history:"

Rhode paused dramatically here, and it was as much for the drama as to relieve the numbness in her left leg that she slowly - creakily, even, for it was cold here - got to her feet (her lap under blankets), just in time to see two of her audience number disappear together, to the next fireside camp down the graded forest road. She was surprised she had held them for this long...

"Word from my blood is my great-gran, six kids to four fathers. She was assigned, see, to one of those squatters who applied. You could apply for a female convict, like, “housekeeper”. With giant mimed rabbit-ear fingers for emphasis.

"And then after a while, she got assigned to someone else.

"She stole a horse, in the beginning. My gran arrived in Botany Bay 1790. The worst voyage, they reckon. One in four died in that journey. Below decks. Chains, Births, Deaths. 10 months to get here.

"Maybe she liked it,out in the wilderness, the squat (cheers), out there...

"Sometimes we joined the blacks. Some great-grans did, anyway - dropped bondage, went bush. And lived on through the kindness of beings more gracious than ourselves.

“Meanwhile, the British, ourselves, directed by the people who were us and not us, made roads and schools and businesses...we caught fish and shot roos and took samples. We chopped off people''s heads and sent them back to Britain as souvenirs.

"Joseph Banks got the best one, Pemulway.

"We and our elders who hated us waited for ships to bring beauty and culture and food. Sometimes we went hungry. And the sailors were crazy men who battled strange seas and sometimes lost."

Another breath. Rhode took a swig of creek water from her tin cup,and Jasper beside her picked up the cue, tinkling an introductory ripple on her thumb piano, mbira, Zimbabwean instrument washed to the west on the wind.

A rustic steel sound, short and blunt, played percussively with round upon round of melody. The two strands of music, treble and base, melded to form a longer, more individualised whole, which waved in and out, forming with voice and spiralling with the smoke to fill the edges of the campfire circle. When the music had settled itself, become one with voice, Rhode and Jasper moved on together.

"On the edge of a continent, the British waited. While they waited, the elders who needed us but didn''t want us drew lines on maps and waved away parcels. Later, they sold our land, throwing people - us - into the bargain.

"This white place, mate, was built on the guilt and the sweat of us. We chopped trees and grew sheep and fenced cattle. We made candles and flour and bread. We provided all the services required to open a new colony out. Our labour made Australia a rather insipid diamond of Empire."

The stars laughed at Rhode''s audacity. A summary of Oz!

"Of course, my ancestors weren''t the only slaves. There were 50,000 islanders in Queensland by the time we were a nation. That''s the stats. They didn''t come here by choice, so the history books tell us, anyway."

"Real Australians are cattle men. That''s not true. My mother was a city girl, escaped to the stations of far north Queensland - yep, still the outback, back then - courtesy of a difficult husband who shot himself rather than face facts.

"Fact: sometimes a tin shed in cattle country is as far as you''re gonna get.

"Fact two: sometimes love doesn''t go away."

"But I digress. Heaps of cattlemen throw their hat into that ring. Perhaps it''s the stars. A wild star-night can do strange things to you, yes? Maybe that will become part of our folklore too, one day: the min min light, the Kaditcha man - and the wild star-nights.

"Should strange things happen, people will just nod to each other: ''Aha! It was just the stars.''

"Seems to me, isolation is an occupations hazard of loving this place. Seems to me, it''s part of who we are. It''s who I am. I''m scared to leave this place. Can''t leave. They''ll chop it down."

There was a murmur of assent, a shifting of weight around the fire. Cold bottoms, aching hands. The breeze lifted a little, throwing coolness all around. Adjustment of shawls, and of blankets.

"We are earnest, aren''t we?" said Rhode. The others said nothing to her, they had decided the story was over, the occasional chattering head bent to another, their minds back on the immediate politics of what it was they were doing out here, but most lay quietly their sunburnt faces turned up to examine the stars.

"Sitting around this campfire," explained Rhode to herself.

She said nothing out loud now, falling unembarrassed into the reverie of silence that had so caught up the others. "Earnest and belligerant and complacent too.

"The adopted children guarding the oldest land, with the fierceness that only the homeless know. Am I still British? British? Like produces like, so they say. But I reckon it''s in this land.

This land produces a yearning for learning something like what''s been before.
Hmmm. a lotta people wouldn''t like to hear that.
A lotta people got tabs on ''originality''.
We haven''t been here very long. But I say the land will teach us how to do it. And those been here longer got a real head start. I wanna learn from them, what they wanna give."

Time to round up, people getting restless.
Rhode spoke up.
"Just let me tell you this: we are the land. We are from it and to it. We start and end here. We start and end learning here. We start and end in the desert, and the forest, and the sea. We are aching to belong. Maybe our ancestors ached to belong. Well, we''ve got nowhere else to hark back to. This is it.

"The land! The land! Australian-ness comes from it. It made the first-comers who they are, and it''ll make us too. All of us. Just you wait and see.

"I put clay on my face today, to be part of the country I have no answer for.

"I am a daughter of the revolution."

Rhode shifted her weight, relaxing, now, with the effort of the story over.

"Oh - sorry - I forget: Ho!"

And then at last it truly was.

 

[LaraOnline]

The worship of trees

“The world is generated by love. Rivers of love run through its core, pushing out in places, in people.
“Love pours out in rivers, in oceans, the rain. Trees. What more proof of love do you need?”

Rhode turned from the tourists and hugged the jarrah beside her. The grey-cork bark was charcoaled, burned- she rubbed her face and came away with the tree’s mark.

“They burn through here every few years,” she pointed out. “Helps keep the fire risk down – and reduces biodiversity. Story is that Aboriginal burning led to eucalypts needing fire to seed. But even that’s questioned nowdays.”

Two elderly visitors looking at her. Then they looked to the trees.
The trio were standing in forest opposite the clearfell, just out of sight of the loggers. That was for courtesy rather than privacy there – nothing illegal then about walking around an unboundaried forest. Forest is boundaried, made out-of-bounds, before logging takes place. The companies get their associates in Parliament to invoke an Act for each block. And if it ain’t boundaried, it ain’t logged. The goal of all these forest people.

Protestors. Trouble Makers.
So there they were in the forest, the tourists and Rhode, Jasper and all, in the Australian south-western forest. That’s way Western. On the other side of the continent.
What was the forest like?

Oh, trees and bush, you know the stuff: ferns and lichens, little flowers…This one’s got jarrah and redgum and great karri eucalypts that stretch.
Salmon gums pink. Orange moss that grows like a brain. Ani-eating plants. Razor grass. Like a lot of forests, this one is mounted on a bedrock of granite, dusted with dirt-powder and leaves. Sometimes not green if not raining. Annual creeks rise and fall.

Along the occasional banks, there is a tea-tree sea. Ancient lady gum tree peeling impossibly white. Impossibly tall. You’re impossibly tall, Lady Karri. She just drops branches as she goes along. Loggers get killed by karri branches all the time.

But not these particular loggers, the loggers behind the now of she-oak linking the gravel road with wilderness. Not the loggers across the road from our heroes, who are rubbing face on tree or maybe just looking, maybe stretching out a hand to brush a trunk or two. These loggers are far from in danger. They’ve got a variety of bulldozers, just turned their square of forest into carpark, no branches here. Log dump’s up the road.
Rhode’s wearing my favourite outfit, the old silk nightie number, lace trim above the knee, with marri-dyed jeans on. She’s got the old scarf hooked around her head. She’s filthy.

“Fc these machines!” she says, snapping her face to the sound, and baring her teeth so strangely the tourists flick to each other.
Steady on. We’re talking public relations here. Won’t turn ‘em green if they think you’re aggressive.
“Sorry,” she says. “That noise…”
And they make their way back to the camp.

There are about fifteen of them here permanently, give or take a few hundred. Everybody drifts, moves camp, goes to the city, goes East, comes back. When they get to the forest, they forget the city. When they get to the city, wel, they forget the forest too. But the float holds, it keeps the presence; the faces tick over with such slow consistency that every individual thinks s/he has been here forever. And in spending their time, staying long enough to be recognized, each of these drifters has unwittingly conscripted themselves to the Green Army – the last army, the one that is real to them. Motley soldiers. Sometimes they’re fools.

The blockade camp is grotty and charming. It has the presence of any space genuinely occupied, genuinely lived in. There are old rugs, a few stale mattresses, stretched under a burned green tarpaulin erected on the scrub-rolled forest floor. There are pine needles scattered on the dirt, a couple of rickety bush chairs. A gas burner or two, donated. There is a garbage bag full of cast-off clothes: the ‘op-shop’. Rhode lives in this camp. Her belongings are rolled in another dusty scarf shoved under a shelf of legumes and turning vegetables. Her bedding is a blanket, which a dog is sleeping on right now. At night she slopes off to the bush, sleeps under logs to avoid camping fines. Forest police at 3am, helping the loggers do their job.

First week in to the logging, the protestors turned up. Ya can’t stop progress. Ah, but you can. In this place. Right here, right now. Protestors blocked the road off. The loggers went away that day, went and worked somewhere else. The loggers keep coming back, but the protesters keep adjusting. How do you replant a forest exactly?
Rode walked the old two through the bush a bit. Interested people! The elderly always were the staunch. She walked them through the bush a bit, to thank them for their time.

This was a pretty patch, lush with small wildflowers, tall grass trees, the balgas, and banksias. As the step through thin undergrowth, there is birdsong. Western paradise. A bit left. The three see all this, feel the fresh air. Beauty so sharp it seems new.
Then, a sharp turn, over a log and there’s the road, reassuringly close. Dragonfly camp twenty metres up the road. As they came closer, they could hear Wompy telling his tamarind tree story.

“The Brits weren’t the first visitors to come to this place, you know.” Says Wompy. He’s relaxing for moment from his quiet self. “Do you know? No, not the Dutch, not the Portugues. The Indonesians, they came to this place before any of that lot. They lived here, in Oz, up the top, for five months at a time.
“They had babies with people.
“They planted great tamarind trees that give shade and good fruit. Cape York and the Gulf. I’ve been over there. I’ve seen.”
He rattled his dreadlocks. He has constructed a new entertainment: porcupine needle through nose.

“Macassans, they were, from Sulawesi. Thery weren’t Indonesians then. They came, thirty or forty or sixty ships at a time. They traded and brought food and tobacco and clothing and alcohol. They looked for trepang. The Aboriginal people swapped pearl shell and turtle. The Macassans were traders, friends maybe. Aboriginal people even went away with them on these ships as guests, visited Macassar. I swear it’s true.
“That’s where the tamarind tree comes from, in Australia. Didn’t just turn up on the beach, you know…”

Rhode does her best brisk-for-the-guests routine. “Any hot water?”
There’s a trickle for the pair’s ambitious camping cups. Rhode refills the big black fire-kettle, ignores the empty woodpile, and disappears.
She came back two days later, emotionally distracted and a little scrateched. She just got accidentally lost in her love of trees.

 

[LaraOnline]

As you can see, it''s kind of concentrated writing, little snapshots. I don''t like to work too hard for too long when I read, that''s why all the little pieces are short.
Actually, I think I''ve mixed the bits up a bit...I haven''t looked at all of this in years.

Last one for today:

The effect of Animism on the spirit

To catch the day’s very end, Rhode and Alien climbed in the old white ute and headed to Moyner’s Rock. Granite grey edifice, taller than Australian public buildings. Perhaps it’s a real monument. Walked the steep trail, Rhode and Alien snorting in the fading sun like determined horses until they finally breasted an horizon that cleared them out into tree-space.
Floor of wide granite, sky-high. Below them a vista of eucalypts danced, doll-like, until the distant mountains swallowed the sun. The sudden vision filled them with breath. The wind! The wind was racing with excitement.
The pair gave each other a little hug of happiness, an acknowledgement of arrival, then separated to wander. Alien rounded to crouch behind a pouch of liquid moss which grew and clung to flat pockets carved from this massive granite boulder. If the moss stuck there, sheltered from wind, so would the grass. Alien sat for a little beside the small-scale lichen jungle. He unpacked his things.

Rhode walked to the far side of the rock, set her mind and heart against each other to creep child-like to the edge and peer over. She retreated, took all her clothes off and danced like a maniac, just for a minute, caught in the nexus of sun, wind and view. They literally seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.

Below, she knew, a country road led from a settlement without a second store, to a settlement without a petrol station. From there, a few metres to ocean.
Suddenly self-conscious again, she stopped and stepped back into her shorts and T-shirt dress, put the sandals on, and looked about to locate Alien just as he was finishing up.

“It’s alrightup here ey,” said Alien immediately, and then waved a long blonde hand. “Look, over there, a stretch of karri.”

It wasn’t a distraction from what he had been doing. She thought about partaking, again, so soon after last time, but stopped herself.

The day was waving farewell. Pink streaked across the sky with the gold of last light; clouds made their gracious, distant, sunset appearance. It was still warm and bright, but with the clink of ice – the wind off the southern Atlantic. As Alien and Rhode circled out, not touching but wanting, they found the concave, a giant gouge in the east side of the rock. It was a gaping bite from a stone ripe apple. The air rushed in there, as visibly as water currents did the sea. The small trees and shrubs clinging to wall bellowed and huffed with the changes in movement. They crouched on the edge, there was a sudden over-abundance of space. Then it was true: they had to climb down it.

200m of life and clear thinking. But hand to hand, with toeholds, it was an easy mark down 15m or so. The route seemed evident from the top and they planned it quickly. A shelf ran itself into a rather handy seat. Curved round them, dangling their feet over the edge, breath was fast and cool. Alien smiled and, for the first time, put his long arm around Rhode’s waist. The world beat a tattoo strong their hearts and heads. The world waved at them in colour, a vibration soothing to the eye. Living! The trees waved at them, now somehow more immediate than ever before as the drop slipped back from underneath them, their legs hanging over their granite bench. They were hanging on the edge of everything. Their legs were floating in it.

Climbing back up was different. Facing front-on to the rock, no larking about this time, the trail suddenly showing reverse meaning. Dried moss peeling under fingertips like shedding scales. Clawing her ways to the top, aware of the trees and the hurtling wind and space, Rhode felt herself climbing a great, moving beast. “I am rounding the back of an Australia-creature,” she realized. A giant frog? A cane toad? Urgh!

No, this was a nurturing state, a sense of danger but a straight forward test. This was a loving adventure. A crocodile? A fish? A stonefish perhaps – ah, but now she was just temporarily panicking – there she had it! She had the handhold…hauled…herself…up, and was free.

Thank you Mother Crocodile. I just crawled towards the centre of your eye.

 

[Dreamgirl]

I had no idea you were expecting your third baby! That is incredibly exciting. Congratulations to you Lara! I always enjoy your company when you post something.

 

[LaraOnline]

Thanks Dreamgirl!
Yes, the new baby is due at the end of April.
I made it through Christmas (did the whole works for all my family), collapsed on Boxing Day, and when I got up, I think my stomach had extended another 20 cms! Now, I really AM a pregnant lady! I waddle like one!

 

[iluvcarats]

Hi Lara!
How are you feeling?
When is the big day?

 

[LaraOnline]

Hi there Carats!

Once again you have surprised me, (it was a surprise to see ''my'' page turn up on the Home Page top of list)!!

I am feeling...full.

Due at the end of this month (gulp) the doctor gleefully announced today that the little ''un had put on a growth spurt, and this might be my biggest baby so far... no surprises there, I guess, as they tend to get bigger as you go, don''t they?! Cw*p!! I do not p++ watermelons very well, unfortunately! Luckily, I am seemingly impervious to pain, and do heal pretty well. Although, from the moment I arrive in the hospital, the first thing I will say (to any question) is: ''vaccum this time, not forceps'' and alternatively ''please, no scissors!!''